It surely came too late to help save them from relegation but the second point of Terry Connor's vexed reign as the Wolverhampton Wanderers manager suggested they may go down fighting after all.

With Sunderland playing like a side mentally planning their summer holidays, the tricky Stéphane Sessègnon apart, Wolves thoroughly deserved to arrest a run of seven successive defeats. Indeed, considering Connor's only other point was collected at Newcastle United during his first game in charge, Mick McCarthy's successor must wish he could visit the north-east every week.

"We can still stay up," said Connor whose bottom-placed side stand eight points adrift of the 17th-placed Wigan Athletic with four games to go. "It's going to be difficult but it's not impossible. We're delighted with the point and it's nice to take a clean sheet home."

The small band of visiting supporters huddling against the unseasonably chilly wind that whipped in off the North Sea amused themselves with chants of "Only one Terry Connor" and "Connor for England", but by the end such irony was replaced by a measure of restored pride in their team.

Results may not have been kind to McCarthy's erstwhile assistant but no one can say Connor has not approached managing Wolves with diligence. Here he clutched furled sheaves of A4 paper and frequently scribbled frantic notes as his players initially lived dangerously at set pieces and wobbled in the face of Sessègnon's fancy footwork.

If Hennessey did well to repel Sessègnon's low long-range shot, Simon Mignolet took a second attempt to gather a deceptively awkward shot from Anthony Forde. Making only his third appearance, Forde, a young Irish winger named academy player of the year at Molineux last season, looked lively on the left, his naive yet still promising performance against the thoroughly streetwise Phil Bardsley suggesting he may prosper in the Championship next term.

Admittedly, Forde had Richard Stearman's vital interception to thank for sparing his blushes after a casual concession of possession deep in the Wolves' half. But this was a day on which players from both sides frequently, frustratingly, lost the ball far too cheaply.

"I should have stayed in the greenhouse," said a Sunderland fan at half-time. Yet if an afternoon tending plants would certainly have been a warmer experience at least the second half represented a marginal improvement on what went before.

While one gloriously defended disorientating dribble from Sessègnon raised home spirits, Wolves came slightly closer to scoring. First Forde forced Mignolet into a routine stop before being replaced by Jarvis, before a terrific dummy from Steven Fletcher prefaced Sylvan Ebanks‑Blake shooting wide through Martin O'Neill's bisected defence.

Hennessey adroitly blocked James McClean's close-range header following Craig Gardner's cross, but David Edwards directed a dipping volley fractionally wide and Mignolet performed wonders to keep Fletcher's goalbound header out in the wake of Jarvis's centre.

"We had to be thankful for a great save from our goalkeeper," O'Neill said. "We should have done more, we didn't create enough. It's frustrating. We've got to get a grip on things. We've got work to do."

If it is safe to assume he will expect a significant improvement at Aston Villa on Saturday, and Wolves fans should perhaps look forward to Manchester City's arrival at Molineux next Sunday with a smidgeon of optimism.